


You Can Take it All From Me But You Cannot Take it All From Him

by chaWOOPa



Series: The Family we Build in the Meantime [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, M/M, Trans Taako (The Adventure Zone), neither is talked about extensively but that are technically mentioned so :P, taakitz baby!angus, trans angus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-01 23:00:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13305165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaWOOPa/pseuds/chaWOOPa
Summary: "Taako.... what if she's just gone?"There is a beat as Taako tries to grasp at thoughts that slipped like water through his fingers. A single heartbeat where a man Taako thinks he recognizes-NO! there is alarm in his head and his arms jerk closer to his body, waking the infant (My child! Some part of Taako screams. Your own child, Taako! This is a fact she can't take from me, please!) he had been carefully holding in his arms. For the space of a heartbeat he knows what is happening, and then, just as quickly, the knowledge is gone."Who?"





	You Can Take it All From Me But You Cannot Take it All From Him

"Taako.... what if she's just gone?"  
  
There is a beat as Taako tries to grasp at thoughts that slipped like water through his fingers. A single heartbeat where a man Taako thinks he recognizes- _NO!_ there is alarm in his head and his arms jerk closer to his body, waking the infant ( _My child!_ Some part of Taako screams. _Your own child, Taako! This is a fact she can't take from me, please!_ ) he had been carefully holding in his arms. For the space of a heartbeat he knows what is happening, and then, just as quickly, the knowledge is gone.   
  
"Who?"   
  
\---------------   
  
There are three facts that get Taako through a blur of days where his thoughts blend into a mess of broken memories and static walls.   
  
One: He killed a man he didn't know and he felt nothing.   
  
Two: He has a child named Angus that he loves more than life itself.   
  
Three: His brain is a mess, but he will kill again before anything or anyone so much as _touches_ his kid.   
  
Everything in his head feels wrong except these three facts. They feel natural. They feel right.   
  
A woman who calls herself Lu and hides her face from his eyes has been paying for his room in this tavern for nearly a week by the time he thinks to ask where he is. She says there was an accident and his child was unhurt but he hit his head badly so she volunteered to help them. There is something off about her whole story and he doesn’t trust what parts of it she fills in for him. He is missing what feels like decades of memories and the memories he does have don’t seem to add up to equal the story she gave him.

 

He can’t remember when or why he stopped travelling with his last caravan and he assumes they left him here-but that feels off too. He remembers going to a bar to celebrate ( _there is static where this train of thought leads and he can’t figure out what the static is, what it means, why it is there, but a part of his brain is still trying to tell him things he cannot know so the static sings_ ) something and he got drunk-but that is too far forward in the story. He is pretty sure he had given up on a travelling caravan show around his third caravan alone-but that feels wrong too. Something keeps nudging at the static every time he thinks about how he got here. He feels like the more he tries to think about his past the more is being rewritten. There is static lingering in people's voices and around their caravans and every time he prods a new note plays and a new detail is changed.   
  
He hasn't found a single one that rings quite true.   
  
So he goes back to the drawing board of _one, two, three_ until he has found a personality based off of those and the tiny bits of routine his body remembers. Someone-he thinks it was his aunt-used to tell him “routine makes the man” so he lets his routines build him up from scratch.   
  
He is cold, calculating, callous, and vain; he doesn't mess with other people unless they mess with him and he supposes that it comes from a childhood spent alone ( _the idea of a childhood spent alone will never sit well on his brain but it sits better as time goes on_ ). His world consists of two people; Taako and Angus. He would give Angus the world and more if he could because Angus _is_ his world. The only people who aren't dust, the only people who matter, are the two of them ( _it feels almost too right for there to be two people in Taako's life for him to have grown up alone, but he doesn’t think to hard about it_ ).   
  
'Lu' tells him he is a wizard, and a great one at that, but taako knows by the end of his first day around Phandolin that he is better with knives than anything else. He had known how to throw kitchen knives to kill since he was a measly 20 years old, and he is even better with throwing knives. When 'Lu' finally takes off for good, Taako takes some of his money from the wagon 'he' had bought and uses it to get properly outfitted for a rogue.   
  
The magic at his fingertips and running through his veins proves she wasn't lying about him being some type of magic user, but he is a rogue first and a wizard second. The woman he buys his daggers from calls him an Arcane Trickster.   
  
When he and Angus finally take off in their wagon, Taako is more than ready to never look at the town of Phandolin again.   
  
\---------------   
  
Angus is two when Taako does his first show with magic. He is already talking and walking, something that makes it hard for Taako to do shows in the first place, but the novelty of the childish antics of a two year old who can narrate near perfectly what his father is cooking is wearing off and they need an audience to keep the show going. Taako is more than confident in his cantrops, so he throws some in here and there without telling Angus beforehand.   
  
"KOKO IS THAT _MAGIC_ ?!" Angus gasps delightedly at the sight of Taako's cake batter turning rainbow colors as he pours it.   
  
"A chef never reveals his secrets, bubbuelah!" Taako declares, winking at the sparse audience to their delighted laughter.   
  
After that it becomes common place for Taako to sprinkle magic into his shows. He is still a rogue, will always be that way, but the more magic he practices the more naturally it flows, so he keeps at it.   
  
\-------------   
  
In one universe, Taako doesn't have the world's greatest and sassiest detective as a son and Sazed kills 40 people in an effort to kill one.   
  
That is not this universe.   
  
In this universe, he doesn't even get a chance to put the poison in the cooking wine. Instead, an 8 year old boy with a fancy cap and shoes that sparkle almost as much as his father’s show makeup pops up from his hiding place and says, “I knew you were up to something!”

 

In a flash the poison is spilling on the floor and Sazed has Angus pinned by the throat against the wall. He barely has the chance to growl a threat before Angus is kicking the wall and screaming. He tightens his hand and the scream chokes off but the banging continues and he says, “Let’s be civilized or I won't let you go, brat.”

 

Angus’s banging barely has time to get weaker before the door to wagon bursts open and Sazed drops him.

 

“Angus is every-” Taako starts before taking in the scene in front of him. Sazed backs away from Angus’s crumpled and coughing form, eyes darting everywhere for a way out as Taako stands frozen for half a heartbeat before sweeping to his son’s side. “Are you okay, Bubbuelah?”

 

Angus nods weakly before pointing to the spilled bottle of poison and Taako gently reassures him. “I know, Love, I saw it. You rest here for a second while I take care of _him_.”

 

Sazed freezes where he is at the coolness in Taako's voice. He has never been close enough to Taako to have him care about him, but this, this is different.

 

“Sazed,” Taako starts, his voice still even and cool as he stands from Angus’s side, “You wouldn't know this, but there are three truths upon which I have built myself.”

 

Sazed stumbles back into the wall as Taako turns to face him, every part of his face except his eyes and his ears schooled carefully into a neutral expression.

 

“One: The first memory that I have that doesn't feel wrong,” Taako takes a single step forward, “is when I murdered a man I didn't know and it felt as natural as breathing.”

 

Sazed feels his back hit the wall and he reaches for something, anything that will help him but with a flick of Taako’s wrist there is nothing more around him.

 

“Two: The child you just tried to murder,” he turns back and gives a reassuring smile to Angus and the sudden change in expression gives Sazed whiplash, “is _my whole world._ ”

 

Taako turns back to Sazed and his eyes are ablaze with cold fury again, not a trace of the loving father from a millisecond ago left on his face as he takes another step forward. If Sazed weren't so scared, he would think the way Taako's ears were flat to his skull looked funny.

 

“And three: I would kill again if it meant keeping my baby safe.”

 

Sazed doesn't kill 40 people that day.

 

Taako does kill one.

 

\-------------------

 

Taako doesn't go back to Phandolin in this timeline. Merle and Magnus muck that one up on their own and when Merle reveals that he has the umbrella, Lucretia keeps it for when she finds Taako.

 

They do find him shortly after that.

 

Two years after he kills Sazed, Angus is the one making their money while Taako pretends he isn't a murderer to the general public ( _What he doesn't tell Angus is that it felt good to kill someone, that it felt like a pressure had been building in his head with every year that no one around him died and now he could rest easy knowing the other shoe wasn't going to fall)._

 

Now they are chasing a murderer on a fancy train and neither one can bear to be seen without capitol ‘L’ looks. Thankfully, detective work pays better than Taako’s show ever did.

 

Angus would look like a real school boy who goes to a fancy private magic school if it weren’t for the colors he had decided to make his outfit. That, and his transmuted gemstone boots that sparkled no matter how the light hit them and the fancy feather in his fancy schoolboy hat ( _Taako tried again and again to get him to wear a wizard hat like he had, but Angus insisted in the schoolboy hat, saying it looked more like a detective hat_ ).

 

Taako looks like a movie star; Stiletto heels, sparkling sundress, sunglasses, and all..

 

Angus is the reason the case gets solved and they get off the train with their things in time. Angus is also the reason they go with Magnus and Merle.

 

When the four of them get back to the base Magnus and Merle take the monocle to be destroyed while Taako and Angus are taken to a room with a giant jellyfish that looks like a galaxy ( _the lights in it sparkle and flash and Taako finds himself feeling like the memories he gets back are still altered, but what does he know, really? Almost all of his memories are like that nowadays)._

 

They both get bracers and Taako gets a new arcane focus to replace the one he lost while jumping off the train after his baby threw himself off of it. ( _The umbrella feels familiar and warm in his hands and he can't remember the last time he used something so_ perfect _as a weapon)._

 

He gets paid for his help and he makes sure Angus is too, and they are both sent to see Leon about some coins they got.

 

They can't decide who is more of a menace to the man, Taako or his specially trained Magic boy.

 

The moon feels more like home than anywhere before it.

 

\--------------------------

 

Taako is sent off on missions with Merle and Magnus while Angus stays on the moon. The separation does bad things to both of them, causing night terrors Taako can't remember upon waking and Angus starts sleepwalking.

 

About a month after they join they get wind of their third real relic and Angus has a fit the night before they are supposed to leave.

 

“Koko and I are a _team_ , Madame Director!” Angus yells as he paces in her office. “You can't send him without Me! You can't do it!”

 

The Director sits patiently as Angus yells his heart out at an ungodly hour of the night. She had found him wandering the moonbase in much the same manner he would on nights Taako was planetside on business and she had ushered him into her office for tea.

 

He had taken the offer for tea as an offer to talk as well and she isn't going to stop him.

 

“He needs me out there with him! What if he gets hurt?! What if things get dangerous?! What if something happens and he doesn't come back?!” Angus swings around to look at Lucretia and there is so much Taako in his face and expression that for a moment she cannot think. “I have a right to be there to help him, don't you think so ma’am?”

 

There is something so innately _right_ about a smaller version of Taako glaring up at her and daring her to take him away from the only person who has ever cared for him that for a second she feels her resolve weakening ( _it is only a second while she sees double in front of her and Angus is a very different transgender elf with the same big, expressive eyes)_ . She takes a deep breath and suddenly it is Angus standing there again. “I know Angus, I know. We will set you up with a stone of farspeech, but that is the best I can do. It isn't my decision alone, and me and your father together decided it would be best if you were _safe_.”

 

Angus slumps into the chair across from her, looking defeated. “Why would he just _leave me here?_ ”

 

Lucretia’s heart breaks a little bit and she sets about pouring some more tea to cover up how much Angus reminds her of how Taako used to be. “He would move mountains for you, you know that right?” Angus sniffles and she can't see his face but she knows he is crying as she walks around the desk to set the tea in front of him.

 

Even the way he hides his face when he cries is just like Taako.

 

“Taako has already done so much to keep you safe and he would do so much more, Angus. You mean the world to him, and to lose that…” she paused to let her words sink in, sinking to her knees so she can be on the same level as him. “You asked what if he got hurt or killed, well, what about you? If things are dangerous for him, they will certainly be dangerous for you. He is not leaving you behind because he doesn't trust or love you.”

 

Angus takes a deep, shaky breath. “can you promise he will come back?”

 

She knows he will know she is lying, but she says it anyway. “I promise.”

 

Angus falls asleep in her arms that night to stories about other worlds and their amazing heroes.

 

It becomes routine for when Taako is gone.

 

\--------------------------

 

Davenport joins Angus as a seeker when Taako, Magnus, and Merle come back from Goldcliffe. Angus doesn’t let go of Taako for two weeks after they return and Taako doesn’t complain really about it.

 

His nightmares have started happening with Angus in the room too and having him there to ground him after is better than anything.

 

Taako and Davenport don’t trust Lucretia, Magnus and Angus will die for her, and Merle is somewhere in the middle come candlenights. There are four unreadable patches given as gifts this year and Angus collects all but one of them as he starts to wonder what is going on behind the scenes. Taako, Magnus, and Merle are sent crystal-side when Lucas Miller’s plans go sideways and he has to call for help.

 

Angus gats a call halfway through their excursion for help with a puzzle and he solves it at record speed before their voices drop off the face of the planet and he can’t tell if he killed them or not.

 

Davenport finds him crying over a beeping stone of farspeech in in his father’s bedroom ten minutes later with hot coffee and a copy of a _Caleb Cleveland Kid Cop_ book. “But… I… I’m not allowed to have coffee. Koko says-”

 

“Well Taako can yell at me all he wants when he gets back, huh?” Davenport sets the ( _almost half creamer and so much sugar it almost doesn’t dissolve_ ) coffee in Angus waiting hands as he interrupts the pitiful defense Angus was putting up. “Besides, we have a novel to read, don’t we?”

 

Angus smiles weakly and scooches over so they can settle in together on the bed.

 

When Taako gets home with the Philosopher's stone and a new man to talk to his baby about, he finds Davenport reading the _Caleb Cleveland_ novel quietly with a sleeping half-elf child in his lap.

 

Neither man can quite explain how Davenport got Taako’s coffee preference so right, nor how he knew exactly what to do to calm down his child, but Taako thanks him all the same.

 

They are used to a dangerous lifestyle, this little family of two, but they are used to facing it together and now they are facing it from opposite sides of a farspeech stone.

 

\--------------------------

 

Angus still takes after his father as a rogue, but he goes about it differently. Davenport suggests one day while the boys are off on a wild goose chase of a relic mission ( _Angus knew it wasn’t a real relic the moment they stepped out the door but the director made no calls to bring them back home, instead forbidding Angus to tell them_ ) that he try asking Carey for lessons. This, of course, isn’t the whole story, but it does start Angus’s mind rolling down a path it will not return from.

 

He was banned from the library and the fantasy Costco and Leon’s office for the same reason he wasn’t allowed to be back in the director’s study that day-he was the same force of nature that his father was all concentrated in a small ten-year-old body.

 

So he decided it was as good a day as any to sneak onto the top of the observation dome.

 

He didn’t need Carey to teach him to do something when he could teach it to himself, now did he.

 

It took him two tries to get onto the roof unspotted, and when he got there Carey was already up there. After that, he did take lessons from her.

 

\--------------------------

 

The lessons in sneaking around help when Taako points out a mounting case against the director about a week after his staff carves the letters ‘L’ ‘U’ and ‘P’ into the wall. Most of the ‘evidence’ is cracks in her seemingly perfect composure that Angus ( _in all his childish admiration for the woman who had helped him so many times_ ) hadn’t bothered to look for.

 

Once he sees one, he cannot help but see the rest.

 

Every time she looks at Taako or Magnus or Merle there is sadness in her eyes and a heaviness to her limbs that Angus has seen in those who regret the acts they have committed. She looks at Davenport every now and then and somehow her shoulders both sag and lift with a mix of emotions Angus can’t even begin to understand but still wants to _know_ . Like a magpie, Angus collects things that don’t quite make sense. Thoughts that he can’t really think ( _he had a journal that he kept in a spelled pocket of his bag to record where his thoughts would hit a ‘wall’_ ), things he can’t quite look at, moments where everything feels just a little bit wrong; these are the things he uses to compile a case.

 

It is hard work, trying to solve a case where he physically can’t think about the natural conclusion to all the evidence, but he doesn’t have to do it alone.

 

“So here are the facts,” Angus says to the four men  as he paces in their living room, “ One, Lucretia has a lot of emotions that I can’t really pinpoint and all of them come right back to you four.”

 

“Maybe it is-” Merle starts but Taako slaps a hand over his mouth before he can finish and Angus doesn’t even really notice as Merle retaliates by licking his hand and the two proceed to wrestle quietly for a moment.

 

“Two, there are things we can’t look at, such as the patches you four got for candlenights. Three, there are thoughts and conclusions in this investigation that I literally cannot think,” Angus turns and looks at his (family? Friends? He isn’t sure what to call most of them only that he cares deeply about all three of them) and his father. “I think, if I come at it from a different angle, I might be able to get around the blockage. It feels like… It cuts me off when I try to connect anything to the director. It feels like… it feels like there is another voidfish… but I can’t think about...”

 

Taako reaches out and pulls Angus into his lap so he isn’t struggling to think on his own. He gently unwinds Angus’s hands from where they had found a home in his carefully kept deadlocks and starts humming a lullaby he had sung since before either of them could remember.

 

“Ango, buddy,” Magnus says gently, sitting up in his seat so he can see him properly, “don’t worry too much about it. You might hurt yourself and no one here wants you to do that.”

 

“You will figure it out, Bubbuelah,” Taako says gently, pausing his humming. Angus is too deep in thought to notice how Davenport and Merle both seem to swell with a pride they can’t quite comprehend at the way Taako is treating his boy. “I know you will, but you don’t have to figure it out immediately.”

 

Angus nods and wipes away tears he hadn’t realized had started to fall. “I just want you guys to be happy.” He says. _I just want Koko to not feel so broken,_ he doesn’t say.

 

“I know, Bubbuelah. I know.”

 

\--------------------------

 

Refuge takes an hour in Angus’s time but it takes roughly 12 hours in Taako’s time and when he gets back all he can do is hold his baby boy in his arms and cry. They sleep in Angus’s room that night, Taako propped up against the wall and Angus curled up in his lap like they would when they were on the road.

 

Taako doesn’t tell Angus that he died.

 

Taako does tell angus a week later that he scored a date with death. He forgets that his son is the smartest kid in existence for a half second and is startled back to that reality when he is met with a small, shaking hand gripping his with vice like intensity and an even smaller, shakier voice asking-no-telling him in no uncertain terms that next time he dies he isn’t allowed to keep it a secret.

 

Taako agrees and they spend the next night in Angus’s room again, curled up in the same position as when Taako first got back from the time-sick town.

 

\--------------------------

 

Taako doesn’t take Angus on his first date with him, but he might as well have for all the details he gives him after. The same thing happens after their second date. And the third. And the fourth.

 

Angus invites himself to their fifth date ( _two weeks before Lucretia intends to send the boys to Wonderland where Angus can’t follow_ ) and realizes two things in the space of three seconds.

 

The first is that his father is completely, head-over-heels in love with death himself. The second, based on no evidence but a gut feeling and Angus’s own facial structure, features, and hair, is that Kravitz is his dad.

 

He doesn’t bring either observation up ( _Taako “No Tact” Taaco may have raised him but he knows how to run an investigation and that is not it_ ) but he lets them sit at the forefront of his brain as he watches the two men that night. He collects casual touches and teasing jabs and ear flicks like a dragon collects trinkets and by the end of the night he has a bigger hoard than any dragon in Faerun.

 

It takes approximately point two seconds after the rift closes behind Kravitz for Angus to burst into laughter. “Koko, Koko, Holy shit Koko, You are _gone_ for him!”

 

“Shut up Ango,” Taako says as he musses Angus’s carefully done up hair. Angus just laughes and hugs him around the waist.

 

“It’s okay Koko. I like him too,” Angus says quietly after a moment.

 

There is a moment of silence as they stand like that, Taako’s hand on Angus’s head and Angus’s arms wrapped around Taako’s middle until finally Taako sighes and kneels down to hug him back.

 

“Good,” He said as he pressed his head Into the crook of Angus’s neck, “‘casue you remember our number one rule, right, Bubbuelah?”

 

“If they aren’t a Taaco,” Angus starts, the grin on his face softening into something less knowing and more sincere.

 

“Then fuck ‘em,” they finish together.

 

\--------------------------

 

Taako isn’t sure which is worse, saying goodbye to Angus at the BOB base or realizing he didn’t get say a proper goodbye before their stones of farspeech cut out around Wonderland.

 

 _Either way,_ he thinks as he makes the snap decision to _get magnus_ _back, he will still have Kravitz if I don’t make it home._

 

\--------------------------

 

They get out of wonderland and before Taako can even get his stone properly attuned to his son’s frequency there is a wooden hand covering his stone.

 

There is a garbled, half-understandable hysterical half-elf child on the other end begging “ _Koko please come home, I can’t lose you Koko, please_ ” and Taako is half a second from blasting Magnus’s mannequin body all the way to Phandalin if he _doesn’t move his fucking hand he swears to the gods-_

 

Just as quickly as Magnus had stopped him from finishing attuning his stone, the red Litch in front of them tells Magnus to back off and let Taako to reassure his kid before he hands over his stone. That is all the permission Taako needs and he is a solid ten feet away before Magnus can even move. Nothing in the world would keep him from his baby, not even a Litch he was pretty sure was more in the right than the Director at this point.

 

“ _Baby, Bubbuelah, Angus, Love, Ango, I am here. I am alive and I am here and I am talking to you right now, do you understand?_ ” Taako would be there for his kid no matter what but he isn’t stupid and neither, he knows, is his baby.

 

“Koko?” Angus is sniffling and Taako can picture him trembling as he curls himself around his stone of farspeech. “Koko oh my gods you are alive!”

 

He is crying again but Taako knows that this time it is relief. Taako takes a deep, steadying breath and says, “Listen Bubbuelah, I can’t come back to the base just yet, so no one can know that we are alive and out of wonderland. Find Davenport and curl up with him, okay? Don’t sit alone while you wait for me. I will be home soon, Bubbuelah. I promise.”

 

Taako can’t see him, but he knows he is nodding before he remembers this is an audio only call. “Okay. I will wait with Davenport.” He pauses and takes a deep, gulping breath to steady himself. It doesn’t work very well. “I love you, Koko.”

 

“I love you too, Angus,” Taako breathes before hanging up. He gives himself two, then three breaths to steady himself again before turning around and handing his stone to the red robe. “You better make this quick and you better make this worth it, buddy, because I am going to see my son tomorrow whether you like it or not.”

 

The red robe nods and Taako is pretty sure that if he had a face there would be understanding there.

 

\--------------------------

 

The first thing Taako does when they get back is hug Angus. No one asks what the mannequin is for, no one asks where Magnus is, no one really lingers in the pod bay after Taako and Angus sink to the floor in a pile of tears and hugs. Merle orders the mannequin to surrender the bell and then the four are left alone with Avi in the bay.

 

Taako uses a spell to make Angus light enough to carry and then doesn’t put him down for anything. This suits Angus well as he clings desperately to Taako and leaves the investigating to Davenport for the time being. He is, after all, only ten, and sometimes ten year olds need to be reassured that their parents aren’t dead before they need to solve a mystery.

 

Taako is a better actor this time around, when it comes to the loss of Magnus. He is an even better actor when it comes to convincing Magnus to wait to get back into his body because he _understands_ what Magnus means this time. Those are the arms that held his wife just as these are the arms that are holding his son and there is something irreplaceable about that.

 

Reason has always been Taako’s strong suit.

 

\--------------------------

 

When he and Merle make it to the Director’s office he finally puts Angus down and now it is _his_ turn to put reason before emotions as he leaves his baby behind to keep watch. Angus doesn’t keep watch, he saves their hides when the security system is different than last time.

 

Taako gets them into the vault with something he bought from garfield and Angus gets the feeling it is better that way when he looks at the sheer number of digits on the lock. Barry’s coin is saying something but Angus isn’t listening because there is a tank on the desk with the same effect on it as the Voidfish’s tank had had before inoculation and Angus knows that this is the answer to everything he wanted to know for so so long.

 

He grabs Taako’s hand and drags him to the desk where they each get a drink of the water in the tank and Angus can _see_ and Angus can _think_ but as soon as he turns to tell Taako this his excitement drops with his heart at the sight of his dad doubled over with his head in his hands. An alarm is going off somewhere and the holy symbol that used to be active on Lucretia’s desk is sitting dormant next to it’s pedestal as guards shout from down the hallway and Angus is more concerned about the look of pain on his dad’s face.

 

“Koko? Koko are you okay?” he reaches out and grabs Taako’s upper arm and in that instant Taako meets eyes with him.

 

Angus has seen his dad lost in memories before, has seen him wake up from night terrors and has seen him get lost in his own head and knows the way his eyes glow with memory every time, but this? This is something entirely new. Angus sees Taako’s eyes focus on him for half a second before they are sliding back into a past that is so full and so new that Angus isn’t sure what to do anymore.

 

A guard wrenches the two of them away from each other and Angus screams, fighting to get back to Taako’s side. Someone kinder puts a hand on his arm and says “Follow them, don’t fight and you will end up in the same place” and Angus calms at Davenport’s words, running off to follow them.

 

\--------------------------

 

When Taako stands and points his umbrella at Lucretia there is a small boy standing next to him, holding onto his arm, pointing his own wand at her, and the words that come out of his mouth are less “You took everything from me” and more “You took everything from him” because Taako today remembers caring about more than Taako, remembers a life that didn’t require him to forget how to love and then relearn it again. Taako today understands exactly what _should have been_ for his son and knows what _was_ and can see that the woman he _should have_ called Aunt is the reason he has learned to live like Taako does.

 

 _No one_ should have to learn to live like Taako does.

 

\--------------------------

 

When Taako turns a perfect circle of black glass into a perfect circle of sapphire Angus calls Kravitz ‘dad’ instead of sir and that triggers something in his memory, leaving him gaping back and forth between Taako and Angus.

 

Kravits gets it before Taako and for that, Angus applauds him. He doesn’t do much with the information, however, except give them both desperate, tight hugs before he has leave to fight for his home- _their_ home.

 

Angus figures the two of them will have time tell Taako after everyone gets home safe.

 

\--------------------------

 

Angus doesn’t get to see Taako off to his final stand in this universe.

 

Taako shares a look with Magnus who shares a look with Carey who turns Angus around from the group of adventurers with the excuse of wanting to make sure they hadn’t left any weapons in the other room.

 

By the time Angus managed to slip past her back into the room where Taako was supposed to be, the Starblaster was already taking off into the Hunger.

 

It went like this; Taako stood on the deck of the ship with his back firmly to home and his face towards the thing threatening to take it all away, tears slowly dripping from his eyes as he stood strong and proud to defend his home, his family, _his son_ from the very thing that had been chasing him for over one-hundred years and if he flinches at the child-like scream of anguish just within range of his hearing then no one mentions it.

 

It went like this; Angus finally dodged Carey’s nimble, strong arms and made it into the room where the Starblaster had been sitting just moments before, he knew what he would find because he knew his dad but he needed to see it for himself. He comes into a big, empty room in time to see the bottom of the ship clear the top of the room and he _screams_ because what else can he do? He is ten and he is screaming and he is watching his father go on a mission he is too young to understand is a suicide mission but he understands all the same. He is ten and he is crying and he is screaming and there are arms around him to comfort him but this is the apocalypse and his dad is flying off to save the world and he knows he should be proud but he is ten and all he wants is for the arms around him to be his dad’s.

 

All he wants is for his Koko to come home.

 

\--------------------------

 

His Koko does come home eventually.

**Author's Note:**

> mwahahhahahahahahahaha i made myself cry at the end so now you have to cry too hahaha (plz i am sorry i just couldn't think of a better place to end this)
> 
> i wanna write longer things about specific scenes in this au but ~who knows!~ <3


End file.
